


interstellar, interpersonal, interplanetary

by fab_ia



Category: Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers, Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Aliens, Artificial Intelligence, Crossover, Found Family, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, WAYFARERS AU, incredibly niche and self indulgent but Screw You im writing this for me, referenced interspecies relationships, ridiculous sci fi au of a sci fi podcast, space travel, tags will be updated with new chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 12:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15340176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fab_ia/pseuds/fab_ia
Summary: there is no such thing as a 'conventional crew', these days, but kepler has preferences- small in number, on a small enough ship to make no more than three crewmembers essential at any particular moment. the urania is his pride and joy, better than the asteria where he was born and raised, and the other ships he's journeyed on in his life. a cargo ship by trade, each member of his crew have pooled enough funds to be able to travel near enough wherever they like, picking up odd jobs in between trips.





	interstellar, interpersonal, interplanetary

Their crew isn’t the most predictable, by any means. Kepler knows this, and it remains a thought that frequently comes to the surface of his mind when the three of them (the consistent three that never change, consisting of himself, Maxwell and Jacobi) are doing almost anything. Additional members to the  _ Urania’s  _ crew are infrequent and usually only spend a short time with them.

Most never return, bar the two other humans that have spent four or more tendays with them at various points in their past. The longest serving (at six and a half tendays) is Clarke, whose accent and skin tone betray him as being from one of the colonies, unlike Exodan-born Young. Young’s constant smugness and sense of authority grate on Kepler’s nerves and more often than not, he finds himself declining her offer to join them again.

But Maxwell and Jacobi never change. Not much, at least.

Kepler knows what he needs to about their backgrounds, about the two of them, and they possess similar knowledge of him. Talking about their families tends to be unnecessary and they find far more entertaining ways to spend the time.

Jacobi in particular has a fascination with the bot tattoos Kepler got in his early twenties, watching their movement with a quiet fascination. The son of archivists in the Fleet, his experience with such things has purely been through the Linkings and the occasional glimpse of them on others living in the Fleet. Kepler can’t say that he understands, but the light touches of Jacobi’s fingers against his arm feel nice.

“Doesn’t it tickle?” Maxwell asks, startling Jacobi out of his unusually quiet reverie with an undignified squawk.

“Not exactly,” Kepler says. “It feels nice, actually. If I wanted him to stop, I’d have told him to do that a long time ago. He’s very intense about physical contact.”

He has a sneaking suspicion that Jacobi picked that up partly from his parents, whom he met several standards ago and found them willing to hug him almost whenever he spoke; but also partly from the Aandrisks he had spent a fair amount of time with before Kepler recruited him. He's under no illusions about what happened there and Jacobi has never seen it fit to be ashamed, so Kepler never treats it as something shameful. 

“I don’t get that,” Maxwell says, scrunching up her nose. “Anyway. Clarke’s at Port Coriol and since you told him we’d be picking him up… shouldn’t we, y’know, head there?”

She’s got a point. Kepler should really have been watching where they were, but he’d been distracted by something that he’s still a little annoyed at Maxwell for interrupting. Quiet moments with Jacobi, he finds, are increasingly difficult to come by.

“I’ll go fly,” Jacobi says with a grin playing at the corners of his mouth, stretching a little before he holds out a hand for Maxwell to pull him up by (which she does with an exaggerated groan and a roll of her eyes). He turns back to Kepler to flash him his full grin, artificial light glinting off of his ocular implant as he turns. “I’ll see you when we dock, yeah? We can… whatever you like. Before Clarke turns up.”

Maxwell fakes gagging as she and Jacobi head off to god knows where, in her case. Jacobi, Kepler knows, is headed for the pilot seat of their ship, like he always is before they dock somewhere.

Already in his quarters, Kepler stretches out on the bed and looks up at his, frankly, bare ceiling. He’s grown used to Jacobi’s quarters as of late, with its ceiling filled with photographs that also trail down the walls, handwritten pages of notes and maps haphazardly filling in the empty space.

It was nice. Jacobi made the space into a home, with colourful sheets and clothes with bold patterns that Maxwell jokingly insists were what made him start to go blind in the first place. 

Kepler hasn’t entered Maxwell’s room. She hasn’t invited him, and he doesn’t like the idea of invading her privacy, even for a moment. The glimpses he’s caught through an open door reveal a mess, though, with clothes littering the floor and empty packets all around, likely leftovers from long coding sessions. Kepler finds that she frequently forgoes sleep in favour of making improvements to her homemade AI, that she’s hooked the  _ Urania’s  _ life support systems too and is the source of no small amount of fear to Kepler.

AI’s. He’s never been sure what to make of them, but theirs seems eager to please and has taken a particular liking to Clarke. Because of course he has.

Clarke has his own room aboard the  _ Urania _ because Kepler likes him enough to give him one. He’s almost tempted to make him a permanent member of the crew, if not for the fact Kepler can’t be bothered to make an official job offer.

He considers it for a while before they dock in Port Coriol, where the vox in his quarters comes to life with cheers from his pilot and AI. It brings a smile to his mouth as he imagines the grin on Jacobi's face. 

“Simmer down, simmer down,” Kepler eventually chuckles, when he's calmed down a little too. “All we did was dock, let's not get  _ too _ ahead of ourselves.”

There are supplies to pick up, a crewmember to welcome back and… Jacobi. There's Jacobi. Jacobi is very high on Kepler's list of priorities, as he so often is. 

Maxwell offers to make the run for supplies, with the promise of picking Clarke up on her way back. While almost reluctant to let her go, Kepler waves her off with a list and the insistence  _ not  _ to try out any new mods even when recommended on her forums by respected members of the community. Jacobi ruffles her hair and elbows her in the stomach before she goes and Kepler can't hide his smile at their teasing that so closely resembles that of siblings. 

As soon as Maxwell disappears into the crowd behind a pair of Aeluons clearly deep in conversation, Jacobi lets his hand wander to Kepler's, taking it into his own with a shy smile that he hides by ducking his head. 

“Embarrassed?” Kepler asks, amused. “Nothing to hide from  _ me _ .”

“I know,” Jacobi says. “It’s just… your room or mine?”   
  


In Jacobi's quarters, afterwards, while both are trying to catch their breath, Jacobi curls against Kepler's chest in a gesture too unnatural to be Human in nature, the lights stay low, mimicking the evening outside their ship. 

“You know,” Kepler starts, “when I first heard about some little engineer-pilot hybrid living amongst Aandrisks on Hashkath, I sort of expected you to be one.”

Jacobi snorts as he looks up through his eyelashes and the curls that have escaped where they were pinned back. “You expected me to have scales, huh? I bet you’d like it. Would you? Oh my stars, did I just, like, ask if you’d fucked an- “

“It’s alright,” Kepler says, running his hand over Jacobi’s bare shoulder. “If you were so curious, yes. I have.”

Jacobi hoots with laughter, head against Kepler’s chest. “What I wouldn’t give to have been  _ there _ . Bet you did it with a whole bunch of them, yeah?”

“Just the one, actually,” Kepler says. “While  _ you _ might have gone to an orgy, I have standards.”

He wonders for a second if he’s overstepped some unspoken line, but Jacobi snorts and places a wet kiss to his chest with a smirk. It’s… not unpleasant, not exactly, but Jacobi’s breath goes over it and makes Kepler shiver a little at the sudden chill it sends through him. 

“Don’t judge me for my past actions,” Jacobi says, pretending to be offended. “They don’t give a damn about how you’re, well, built, by the way. Which is probably why Clarke likes them.”

“He just thinks their feathers are pretty,” Kepler points out, because it’s _true_ , albeit a simplification of Clarke’s feelings. Clarke, the two of them know, appreciates all species, for a variety of reasons, and the Aandrisks feathers are a particular part of what he likes about them.

Jacobi grins, glancing up to the feathers above his bed. “They  _ are  _ pretty. I think you’re pretty, too.”

Jacobi was not a man of tact, Kepler had discovered, choosing instead to be open about his feelings and views- a habit he had picked up from the Aandrisks with who he’d spent so much of his life. He had, however, always been lacking in tact and subtlety in any form. Not the biggest problem that anyone had ever faced, though.

“Well,” Kepler says, voice soft. “I… think you’re… sweet.”

This time, Jacobi kisses his lips, smiling. “Yeah, I know. I’m the best.”

_ Not quite true _ , Kepler thinks, but he’s still smiling as Jacobi stretches out and makes a pleased sound when his knees click. It’s strange, how such a simple and basic thing can bring him such contentment, but Kepler thinks it’s a good quality of Jacobi’s.

“How long before the others are expected back?” Jacobi asks as he sits up, turning to gaze at the wall across from him- the one with the window facing the waters of Port Coriol that is, at present, covered with one yellow and one pink curtain to give him and Kepler some privacy. Kepler hums, thinking back- how long had it been since Maxwell left, exactly?

“Probably another ten or so minutes,” Kepler eventually says. “At least. Knowing the two of them, though, I’d give them something closer to twenty.”

“Cool,” Jacobi says. “Clear off, then! I want to clean up so Clarke doesn’t have to deal with, y’know, all the dirt and shit I’ve got all over me.”

“I’ll see you later, then.”

Jacobi waves as Kepler wanders down the hall to find something to occupy himself with before his crew come back to some semblance of normality. He could make food- his usual routine is to do that, at this point, but he has no doubt that Maxwell will pick them up food on her way back from finding Clarke and bringing him back with her. He could get cleaned up, too, but he doesn’t have the same kind of dirt covering him like Jacobi does, oil and grit and sweat making up something close to eighty percent of what he smells like, at present.

Kepler is faced, then, with at least ten minutes with nothing pressing to do and the opportunity to relax after a very long series of days. He’s never been overly fond of having nothing to do- a childhood on the Fleet will do that to someone, instil in them a sense that they should always be busy, with another chore, with work, with school or with family. While long since past, the ideals still hold and Kepler hates nothing more than having idle hands.

The idea comes to him as he glimpses a flash of colour outside one of the rounded windows- Kepler isn’t quick enough to work out what it was, but he has a suspicion that it was either Aandrisk or Human children engaged in a game of some kind. He hesitates for a moment before heading back to his room, where he settles with his back against the wall and lets himself observe the hustle and bustle of Port Coriol from a distance.

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all! this is a wip of a wolf 359 wayfarers au (the series by becky chambers). if you're confused about what i've written here, a link to the wiki is here: http://wayfarers.wikia.com/wiki/Wayfarers_Wiki but i've 100% taken a hell of a lot of liberties with regards to what's actually going on.
> 
> as ever, i'm on tumblr @sciencematter


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